Personal: On Social Media.
Oftentimes, social media doesn't show people as they truly are in their very essence. It doesn’t strip away the masks they put on; instead, it exacerbates people’s flaws and amplifies their failings. In fact, it often distorts and diminishes people, coaxing out their latent impulses, stroking their inner tendencies, only to morph them into something pathological and abnormal; what was a mere velleity is turned into a persistent action. It drives people to act in such a way that, if they paused even briefly or decelerated even a trifle to consider the purpose or reasoning behind it, they might abandon altogether and perceive its futility. But instead, things are now done on autopilot, simply for their own sake with no other conscious and well-considered end—as habits, as behaviours, as things said that are expected from everyone here. Thus, what is deemed “ordinary” in this digital space is merely a prescription that you’ve accepted and have been following, which only leads throughout the days to a persistent sense of purposeless restlessness that keeps shooting its roots within you. The deeper the roots are, the worse is your obsessive need to always act, always share, always reveal more about yourself, always follow the trend, always show others what you have and what you do, all without pausing to ask the fundamental question: Why? Why am I seeking to always be seen outwardly? Thus man becomes plagued by a horror vacui that never leaves him to a moment of self-reflection, until you see something as absurd as an online ‘personal’ journal. It has all become a never-ending externality, with not the least interiority. One no longer has anything autarchic about him, but only lives via the interactions he receives from others.
